Thalidomide

The FDA has actually permitted the use of Thalidomide again. This is that terrible drug which caused the horrific birth defects of babies being born without arms and legs in the late 50’s. Our FDA director at the time, fortuitously blocked the drug from the US market, so mostly Europe was hit with this tragedy. President Kennedy gave her an award for withstanding the pressures and refusing to approve the drug and protecting the US from the same fate. Frances Oldham Kelsey stood her ground and denied 6 concerted high pressure attempts to gain approval for Thalidomide at that time.

Yet our current FDA is now allowing it to be used again. I bring these things to your attention because this is the Federal department we expect to protect us against bad drugs and bad medicines.

Here is an article on thalidomide. Note that they are allowing this terrible drug in crohns medicines, multiple myeloma, among others. I find this highly disturbing. I recommend taking a look at this link so you can have an idea if you might be taking medicines using this drug. They are carefully using several new names & new derivative nomenclature for Thalidomide to mask the drug from being recognized by the public. I recommend becoming familiar with the new names and derivatives so you will recognize the drug. This article also lists the conditions it is being approved to treat.

You wont appreciate the horrors of what thalidomide can do until you look at the images on the next link. These images were carefully omitted from the Wikipedia article. You need to see what thalidomide did to the babies of pregnant women. This link is the google images page.

I was even more surprised to see Europe is allowing this drug to be approved again under its new name, considering the horrific numbers of babies born to mothers in Europe whom had been given thalidomide as a nausea treatment for pregnant women.

This is just one more example of how our current FDA is failing to protect us. It is quite possible that a younger pregnant woman or a younger doctor not familiar with the new name for Thalidomide or the history of it could end up with a pregnant woman taking this terrible drug again.

Any drug which can reap the horrific results this drug did, cannot be good for anyone. Who knows what long term affects it might have. We only saw the short term affects on babies born to mothers who had taken it.

I think everyone should be warned and educated about this drug and how to ensure you do not get it under a new name for your crohn’s or other conditions the FDA has approved.